Here are some reasons why I love The Wall Street Journal’s “Review” section, a weekly section in the WSJ published each Saturday that covers “books, culture, science, commerce, humor, politics, language, technology, art and ideas.” 1. Fusion of interesting news and opinion.
- This is what makes Review so good. The news from the stories alone is engaging enough to be read as a hard news story, but writers add in their own opinion and write the stories in the more interesting (in my opinion) magazine-style of features and profiles. It’s a nice break from the dryness of hard news.
- Ex: A review of Unnatural Selection, a book about the abortion genocide of girls in India and China.
2. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to understand the articles.
- Respected newspapers and magazines shouldn’t dumb themselves down, but it’s nice to actually be able to understand what an article is about. Review’s articles, while still being thought-provoking and well-written, can be understood by a wider audience.
- Ex: A profile of Soleio Cuervo, the web designer at Facebook who helped come up with the “Like” button.
Astute commentary on current events, like the riots in Britain, is one reason the WSJ's "Review" section is so good.
3. Excellent commentary on current news.
- Evgeny Morozov wrote a great article about how the British government should exercise caution when considering shutting down modes of BlackBerry communication and using facial-recognition software to combat the rioters that have struck British cities.
4. Great feature stories.
- The front page story for this week’s publication of Review is about the remarkable teachers at charter schools and the need to involve less remarkable teachers and their unions to reform education in a more sustainable way.
5. Shorter articles.
- Most of the articles in Review are relatively short. I appreciate how they respect my time with their more concise articles, unlike many newspapers.
6. Cool history stories.
- Learning about 17th century sugar and slave trades would normally be boring, but J.R. McNeil’s review of the book The Sugar Barons provides an interesting look at the ruthless men who threw unruly workers into boiling pots of sugar and kept Mozart as a music tutor for their children.
7. Pop culture commentary.
Review also has interesting pop culture articles, like Austin Grossman's analysis of the new Spider-Man.
- If you find Review’s articles a little heavy, there are always pop culture articles.
- Ex: An article on the true appeal of the new Spider-Man, who is a black and Hispanic teenager named Miles Morales.
8. Creative sections and graphics.
- A newspaper section that is text dominated gets intimidating, but Review mixes it up to keep its readers engaged.
- Ex: My personal favorite, “A Week in Ideas” is a compilation of studies from fields ranging from health, to technology to social psychology. This week Christopher Shea covered a study of a safety system that could help avoid car crashes by monitoring electrical impulses in our brain and a study that shows how the size of our eating utensils affects the amount of food we eat.
- Ex: “Week in Words” by Erin McKean, explains unusual words that appeared in The Wall Street Journal in the last week, like “fear gauge” and “prayer-palooza.”
9. Joe Queenan’s column, “Moving Targets.”
- Ranges from why we shouldn’t be saddened that the blog ”A Gay Girl in Damascus” is fake to why people need to keep their shirt on during the summer.
10. Credible writers.
- The writers for this week’s edition of Review include Steven Brill, co-CEO of RR Donnelley’s Press+, Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, and Jeremy Bernstein, author of Quantum Leaps, a book about the “cultural ramifications of quantum theory.” Dang.
2 comments
Arno says:
Aug 16, 2011
Review is alright but it feels a little like a watered down version of the Sunday New York Times. It’s reasonable for the business-focused Journal to put “books, culture, science, commerce, humor, politics, language, technology, art and ideas” into one section.
However, I prefer the Times’ with its weekly 30 page magazine-style Book Review, and full sections devoted to science and art which give you more opportunities to find things you’re really interested in.
I think the closest parallel to Review in the NYT is “Sunday Review:. It does the same combining of hard news with reporters personal expertise to give a new perspective–which can be fascinating.
As a random piece of trivia in the late 90′s the Times launched a weekly “Arts & Ideas” section, which was meant to combine general arts coverage with “the newest in intellectual ideas,” but I think the section burned out pretty quickly since there just weren’t enough “new intellectual ideas” to write about.
James Huber says:
Aug 16, 2011
True, but the WSJ just recently began publishing on Saturdays and it’s pretty hard to touch the Sunday Times.
And I definitely agree that Review is similar to the NYT’s Sunday Review (which was better when it was the Week in Review). I just chose to write about the WSJ’s Review because I think it’s less well known.
An aside, but have you seen the WSJ’s one-page sports section? It’s usually published on the last page of the Personal Journal. It’s really cool; check it out when you have the time.